1. Field
The following description relates to a medication dispensing apparatus, and more particularly, to a medication dispensing apparatus capable of preventing errors that may occur in medication dispensing process according to prescriptions.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 is a diagram schematically illustrating an existing medication dispensing apparatus, and FIG. 2 is a perspective view illustrating a medication cabinet of FIG. 1.
A medication dispensing apparatus as shown in FIG. 1 that automatically creates unit-dose packages of medications in forms of pills, tablets, capsules, etc. is well known. The medication dispensing apparatus may include a medication cabinet 10 that contain pills categorized by type, and a packaging unit 20 that is disposed below the medication cabinet 10 and packages the medications provided from the medication cabinet 10. The medication cabinet 10 may include a cabinet body 11 and containers 12, as shown in FIG. 2. The cabinet body 11 has an inner space with at least one open side. For example, the cabinet body 11 may be a hollow box with one open side. The containers 12 may have a structure that allows a plurality of cartridges 13 to be mounted therein, and the cartridges 13 may be enabled to be withdrawn along with the containers 12 from the cabinet body 11. The cartridge 13 may include a cartridge case 13a and a cartridge base 13b attached to a lower part of the cartridge case 13a. The cartridge base 13a may store one type from among different types of pills. The cartridge base 13b may be controlled to discharge pills from the cartridge case 13a in response to a prescription signal.
Pills discharged from the cartridges 13 are conveyed through a transfer passage and dropped to corresponding intermediate shutters 30 where the pills are temporarily contained, or if no intermediate shutters 30 exist, the pills may be collected directly in a hopper 40. Korean Publication Registration No. 10-0911061 discloses the transfer passage. The intermediate shutters 30, if they exist, may each discharge the contained pills by opening one side. Accordingly, the pills are dropped from the intermediate shutters 30 and collected in the hopper 40. The pills accumulated in the hopper 40 are withdrawn to a packaging unit 20 positioned below the hopper 40, and the packaging unit 20 creates unit-dose packages. In this case, the packaging unit 20 may be configured in various ways. For example, the packaging unit 20 may include a conveyor to transport package paper, a sealing device to seal the package paper, and a printer to print on the package paper various information. Thus, the packaging unit 20 can automatically make unit-dose packages of pills.
In this example, the pills to be dispensed may fail to be discharged from the cartridges 13 due to a malfunction of the cartridges 13 or a system error, which leads to erroneous dispensing of medication. Therefore, to prevent such errors, an optical sensor 50 may be provided to an outlet 13b-1 of the cartridge base 13b, as shown in FIG. 3. This sensor 50 may monitor the discharge of pills, thereby making it possible to check whether the pills are discharged or not. However, there may be a case where the pills are all discharged from the cartridges 13, but not be accumulated in the hopper 40. For example, some pills dropped from the cartridges 13 may fail to reach the hopper 40 due to an unexpected condition of the transfer passage. Moreover, the optical sensor 50 only monitors whether the pills pass through the outlet 13b-1 of the cartridge 13, and hence even when powder flows through the outlet 13b-1, the optical sensor 50 may misidentify the powder residue as pills being discharged. Further, if the cartridge case 13a contains a different type of pill, which is not designated to the cartridge 13, the optical sensor 50 is not able to detect whether the wrong pills are discharged. Hence, there is still a possibility of making a medication dispensing error.